Why wasn't Anna Pomerantseva issued a suicide pill?

Why wasn't Anna Pomerantseva issued a suicide pill? - Woman Crying

Doubtless Anna from Homeland gravely risked her life daily, and probably would be tortured if captured. Suicide pills are issued to spies and certain soldiers. So why didn't the US issue Anna with one?

‘Homeland’ Finale Recap: Carrie’s True Allegiance Revealed – Variety

Saul’s mole was introduced in the penultimate episode, “The English Teacher.” Anna Pomerantseva (Tatyana Mukha) was the lead interpreter for Russia’s GRU intelligence agency and first met Saul in the mid-1980s when she was teaching English in East Berlin. She decided to be a pipeline of valuable information for Saul — a key source of the intelligence coups that built his career — after a group of her student-comrades were executed in East Germany because one of them defected after becoming a spy asset for Saul.

[...]

Saul broke and angrily told Carrie that she “permanently crippled our intelligence capability in Russia,” calling Anna the only remaining “live source” in a nation that is America’s “mortal enemy slowly but surely strangling our democracy.

[...]

Saul immediately called an agent at the UN in the hopes of whisking Anna to safety. In the video he left for Carrie, he praised Anna for her selfless work. “She’s been spying for the past 20 years on the very heart of Moscow. Risking everything every day,” he said.

Homeland Series Finale Ending Explained | Den of Geek

Anna Pomerantseva, apparently the CIA’s last active asset inside the Kremlin, was so thoroughly betrayed by Carrie in an attempt to prevent nuclear war that the best case scenario for Anna became committing suicide rather than a tortuous death at the hands of the Russian GRU.



Best Answer

Re 'Issue'

Anna was an off-book asset.

The answer is kinda short, but hopefully it does kinda point out a possible assumption OP makes.

OP seems to make the assumption that Anna discussed her employment for the US/the CIA thoroughly, and she was regularly briefed or assigned missions or whatever and then issued guns or gadgets. She wasn't. One day, she approached Saul and volunteered to keep providing information. Based on what I remember of season 8, almost all their communication was one-way. If Saul doesn't even talk to Anna, then I don't see why Saul or anyone would 'issue' anything to her.




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